On Saturday we had 30 people show up to play some Legacy at Die Hard Games in Pawtucket, RI. The field was one of the weirdest and most diverse I've seen in a long time, by Team Awesome's count there were at least 5 Zoo, 5 Dredge, 2 Storm Combo, 1 Hypergenesis Combo, 2 Bant Survival, 1 Survival, 2 Countertop, 1 43 Land, 2-3 Enchantress, 1 Dreadstill, 2-3 Goblins, 1 Aggro Loam, 1 Faerie Stompy, and 1 Green Chalice Aggro. The prevalence of Zoo was not surprising but Dredge making up about 20% of the field was crazy - not that I helped much, here's the list I ran:

A fairly standard LEDless Dredge list with some deviations mostly resulting from discussion on the Team Awesome forums. The Woodfall Primus was an addition to fight the Enchantress and Stax decks that were expected to show up in numbers and Iona came along for the ride for some live tournament testing since two handed games can only tell you so much. Enough rambling for now, here's a run down of the days matches:

Round 1 vs. ANT
Not a great way to start off the day. I'm on the draw and keep a weaker seven card hand with the plan of going DDD followed by Cabal Therapy the next turn if I can hit any more gas by dredging a Troll. My opponent drops a Polluted Delta and passes, seems like a good sign. I draw and pitch my Troll. My opponents next turn involves fetching out an Underground Sea, playing Ponder and passing. I dredge into another Troll and a Stinkweed so I lay a City and cast Therapy naming Brainstorm. I get to see a fist full of acceleration and Mystical Tutor, nice. He plays the Tutor for Ad Nauseam and storms out the next turn.

Game two, he keeps a marginal hand on the hopes that he can Brainstorm into his missing pieces. A turn one Brainstorm from him gets garbage and he's stuck drawing dead for the next two turns while I get my CTs online and chip away at hit hand. He is able to play a pair of Echoing Truths to send a couple Ichorids and an Iona (chanting black) back to my hand, but I am able to recur Ancestor's Chosen twice to bring my life total to a comfortable seventy five.

In the third game he leads with another Brainstorm, which cost him the match. I Therapy him seeing a pair of Ponders, Cabal Ritual, Ad Nauseam, and Infernal Tutor. On my next turn I take his Ad Nauseam Cabal Therapy. I set up an Iona which gets hit by a top decked Echoing Truth but am once again able to recur Chosen sending me to the upper sixties, he's forced to play Ad Nauseam at six life dies digging deep for the win.

1-0

Round 2 vs. Bant Survival
I get a turn one PImp forced while my opponent drops a pair of Noble Hierarchs. My Careful Study with an empty graveyard is pretty unimpressive compared to the Survival followed by the Rafiq that he drops on me over the next couple turns. He searches up a Mother of Runes and more exalted dudes to overpower me.

Game two get gets another turn one Hierarch with turn Two Survival. My opening is pretty strong though and I manage to make a Tireless Tribe stick, which powers out a big turn of dredging thanks to Coliseum. He uses Survival to set up a Genesis + Spore Frog (!) lock that I barely manage to squeak out a win against thanks to Darkblasting that silly frog at the end of his turn.

Game three is the same as game two, except he has Aether Vial. Genesis + Spore Frog + Aether Vial > Dredge (nice Ancient Grudges you got in the board there). In all fairness my dredges were fairly horrible this game as I went through thirty plus card without seeing a Dread Return to recur an Iona that would have stopped the Spore Frog insanity - not that it would have mattered as Spellstutter Sprites continued to make timely appearances thanks to Survival to counter all my sideboard tech. Well played sir.

1-1

Round 3 vs. Dredge (with LED)
Game one if fairly long and drawn out as we take turns making a couple Zombies and nuking each others bridges. Eventually I am able to pull ahead by gaining a ton of life with Chosen, and recurring Witness to get a Breakthrough back which dredges all but the last ten cards in my library. I have a ton of Zombies and don't need to be concerned with leaving more than one or two on defense to keep his Troll from connecting.

Game two is even longer and more drawn out. I keep an opener with Firestorm and PImp. He keeps double LED, PImp, Breakthrough. He opts to play his PImp and Breakthrough next turn, only flipping one Narcomoeba but three bridges. He Therapys me to get the tokens to recur a Troll, I nuke his tokens with Firestorm leaving him with an empty board. Unfortunately I can't pick up enough moment and am eventually overrun by zombie tokens despite recurring a Chosen. As I passed the turn back just before he swung for the win I realized that he only had two cards left in his deck and I would have likely been able to deck him had I opted to DR Chosen instead of Witness (for Firestorm). I am able to Kill enough of his Zombies to die with a nice and even zero life total - fail. I don't punt games very often but I'm told later that this was painful to watch.

Time is called as we are shuffling for the third game, neither of us are able to draw a good enough hand to dispatch the other in three turns. I mull to five but settled for a hand with a land an Firestorm to at least make sure I didn't get blown out.

1-1-1

Round 4 vs. Aggro Loam
We sit down and shuffle while waiting for the round to start, my opponent makes some off hand comment about this being a rough game one him even if he draws Trinket Mage. Putting him on something with FoW I keep a seven with DDD in mind. He's on the play and leads with a fetch, I go DDD and he cracks the fetch for a Bayou, nice Jedi mind tricks. On my next turn I play a Careful Study that elicits a scoop.

For the second game I keep a hand that includes Tribe, Careful Study, Breakthrough, Troll, Stinkweed, and two rainbow lands - seems pretty good. I go pretty nuts dredging on my second turn with Study + Breakthrough and am about to recur a Witness when he drops... Ravenous Trap. He isn't able to apply much pressure on me though as I Grudge away a Mox Diamond he was leaning on. Finally, he plays Solitary Confinement and follows up the next turn with Life from the Loam, snagging a pair of cycling lands from the yard. Things are looking grim for our hero but I manage to dredge an Iona who comes down chanting green to put a stop to those LftL shenanigans.

2-1-1

With the final round coming up pairings are posted and I'm sitting in the tenth position with nice breakers and an awkward seven points. Seven of the people ahead of me are sitting at nine points (the other two have ten each) and my only chance is to get paired up and rely on my breakers to carry over the edge.

Round 5 vs. Dredge (with LED and Bloodghast)
He gets to play first and drops a PImp off Gemstone Mine after mulling to six. I counter with a Tribe from City. He draws and plays Breakthough, but fails to find a dredger. His Bloodghasts sit in his yard as my Ichorids continue to come back, racking me up some tokens and nuking his Bridges.

Game two he gets a better start but struggles to find lands to trigger the landfall on Bloodghast. I get Iona online which stops his Therapys (incidentally, I realize that the plural of therapy is therapies - but since it's part of a proper noun I figured I'd spell it Therapys. If anyone could give me an authoritative verdict on how that should be spelled let me know) and Dread Returns, and there's not much he can do from there. After the match I asked how the Bloodghasts had treated him on the day and he seemed pretty pleased overall.

3-1-1

I manage to sneak into the top eight with nine points and excellent breakers. Apparently the ANT Player I faced round one went on to go undefeated for the rest of the tourney (and ended up splitting the finals, congrats man).

Top Eight vs Zoo
Despite being unable to keep an permanent discard outlet on the table and dredging horribly, I wrap up the first game fairly easily.

The second and third games are another matter though, and they play out almost identically. I continue to dredge poorly (more so in game two), get hit by timely Crypts thanks to Sylvan Library powering his hand, and am not able to build up enough steam to remount an offensive. In game two I managed to reach upwards of thirty cards in my yard, including Ancestor's Chosen, without hitting a single DR. Ancient Grudge is able to keep him somewhat at bay by hitting Jitte but in the end I am not able to pull it out.

I end up with a copy FTV: Exiled for my troubles, which is pretty solid for a 5-8 split. Major props to Dave for keeping the prize support at the level advertised even though fewer people showed up than he expected.

Props:
Ichorid, for being awesome.
Firestorm, for being awesome.
Team Awesome, just because.
Dave, for hosting another awesome tournament.

Slops:
Louis for not making top 8, I would have much rather played that Natural Order list than Zoo. I know how much you love Dredge too.
Joe for not being able to make it. Turns out Joe was just afraid to get demolished by me at Chess in between rounds.

badjuju

10-26-2009, 10:36 PM

Good stuff, Sunshine.

That's a pretty wild tourney meta, but I'm glad you made it through haha. Just a few questions:

-So it seems like both Ancestor's Chosen and Iona worked out for you. Any comments on these two fabulous white creatures?
-Was it correct to name Brainstorm with the Cabal Therapy in your G1 vs ANT? I'm asking cause I genuinely don't know, but I understand that it's somewhat of a stab in the dark sometimes.
-Did rolling with only 1 Breakthrough ever feel like you didn't have enough gas when you wanted it?
-I also see that you decided to go with that 15-land setup you told me about. How did that turn out? And as much as I hate running Tarnished Citadel, it's probably just one of those necessary evils lol.

And grats on your FTV: Exiled.

rockout

10-26-2009, 11:42 PM

Oooo Chess in between rounds sounds like fun. Congrats on another solid tournament Justin.

Sevryn

10-27-2009, 12:07 AM

It was interesting to me how well ancestor's chosen pulled its own weight, contributing in no small part to at two close victories. Apparently gaining 30+ life in a deck with a fair amount of inevitability is a good thing ^^.

Joe_C

10-27-2009, 06:18 AM

Joe for not being able to make it. Turns out Joe was just afraid to get demolished by me at Chess in between rounds.

It is SO on for next time..:laugh: :laugh:

Bring it

Misplayer

10-27-2009, 08:29 AM

Nice report Justin, congrats on the finish. I'll have to make it out to one of these some time, although it sounds like Worcester was well-represented at this one.

sunshine

10-27-2009, 12:52 PM

Nice report Justin, congrats on the finish. I'll have to make it out to one of these some time, although it sounds like Worcester was well-represented at this one.

Thanks, hope you can make it out - although it was nice not to get owned by a Dreadnought out of nowhere when trying to make it into the top 8 :wink:.

It is SO on for next time..

:tongue:

-So it seems like both Ancestor's Chosen and Iona worked out for you. Any comments on these two fabulous white creatures?
-Was it correct to name Brainstorm with the Cabal Therapy in your G1 vs ANT? I'm asking cause I genuinely don't know, but I understand that it's somewhat of a stab in the dark sometimes.
-Did rolling with only 1 Breakthrough ever feel like you didn't have enough gas when you wanted it?
-I also see that you decided to go with that 15-land setup you told me about. How did that turn out? And as much as I hate running Tarnished Citadel, it's probably just one of those necessary evils lol.

Ancestor's Chosen was amazing in the main. It's a meta call, but it was the right one for that tourney. Iona, I don't think will get main decked - but she'll stick around my SB until I get a little more testing in.

I generally name Brainstorm with Cabal therapy if my only information is a blue mana source (I did not know he was playing ANT at the time). It's a fairly common card and makes my next Cabal Therapy(s) less effective. Whiffing with CT and seeing a Brainstorm essentially means your next CT will be blind as well/they can protect what you really want to take.

I only had one Breakthrough but I ran a full set of Coliseums. Without LED in my deck I find it hard to justify running any Breakthroughs without maxing out on Coliseums first.

Having 15 land was great - especially considering that four of them doubled as draw spells. I actually never needed to tap Tarnished Citadel for colored mana, which was also nice.

chokin

10-28-2009, 04:53 AM

Reading this list kinda surprised me. While my friend was in town, we messed around with Ichorid until we came up with a list that is damn near that.

It did excellent, but I haven't brought myself to pilot it. I'm really glad to hear you did well though!

Hex Appeal

10-28-2009, 03:11 PM

Game three is the same as game two, except he has Aether Vial. Genesis + Spore Frog + Aether Vial > Dredge (nice Ancient Grudges you got in the board there). In all fairness my dredges were fairly horrible this game as I went through thirty plus card without seeing a Dread Return to recur an Iona that would have stopped the Spore Frog insanity - not that it would have mattered as Spellstutter Sprites continued to make timely appearances thanks to Survival to counter all my sideboard tech. Well played sir.

Just curious how iona would have helped you as I was activating vial for the spore frog. I suppose calling blue would give you a turn to try and dredge up an ancient grudge, but from what I gather you didn't board them in which would kinda render iona useless....?

good match either way, was just curious about that statement.

sunshine

10-28-2009, 04:00 PM

I opened the game with an Ancient Grudge in hand (boarded two in) which I was holding for crypt in case you played another one. At that point I needed to resolve a Grudge, a flashed back Grudge (since you had two Vials in play), and a Firestorm to have a chance of winning.

Really, I was just too far behind once you got Wonder in your yard with a full board and access to all the Spellstutter Sprites you wanted.